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07 October 2009

Comments

Mikey McD

"The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit." Bastiat- The Law

We are giving less because the government is taking more. Higher taxes have forced us to decrease our donations to charity (or at a minimum not increase our charitable giving). The vote buyers (politicians) get to use our money to push their agenda's through a philanthropist juggernaut government system, it is far less rewarding to us "givers" and far less efficient.

Governments should reward philanthropy (tax incentives), not engage in it.

Mikey McD

Only government could steal from one to give to another and expect to take a bow for the effort.

George Rebane

Amen Mikey. Some years back the WSJ published a university study on charitable giving related to a person's political leaning. With the attendant survey they discovered that the liberal gives significantly less to charity than the conservative, apparently because people of the left see most charitable appeals performing social functions they believe should be or already are carried out by government. In short, they feel that their (those that pay) taxes have already taken care of the need.

I recall that the academics were surprised at the results. Most Main Street Americans weren't.

JMcD

This is just a small part of a much larger problem. The governement can never run something as smoothly as a private company nor can it keep a simple task from branching off into several tangent directions. For example, you give the job of sheltering the homeless to the government and they will undoubtedly take this task and add in feeding, medicating, psychiatrics, clothing and transporting, babysitting etc. They will then find 2 people to do the job of one and add in several layers of unneeded management. Your tax dollar is already diluted by this point and becomes even more diluted by the time it is really spent to shelter a homeless person.

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